


north country bred

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Trans Male Character, although not actually as canon divergent as it looks, can you prove to me beyond a single shadow of a doubt that this is not canon, seriously I started this as a silly thing but then i realised it's startlingly canon compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 09:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: No doubt if I pleaseI could marry with easeFor where bonnie lasses are lovers will comeBut the lad that I wedMust be north country bredAnd must carry me back to my north country homePhyllis Norrell falls in love, somehow, quite by accident and quite without her notice, falls in love with her uncle's groom. They elope and marry in York, but her uncle discovers them and has them brought back home in disgrace. Still, it's a little late now, and so the until now eminently respectable (if somewhat spinsterly) Phyllis Norrell has to make do with her rakish, low-class, scheming (but actually quite reasonable in an ironic kind of way) husband.Or at least, that's the story.Pity it's not true.





	north country bred

**Author's Note:**

> I've made a few changes to what we know of Norrell's backstory here. Firstly, Norrell fell into magic slightly later. Haythornthwaite is still around. Childermass and Norrell have a five year age gap instead of approximately ten, because I wanted a young Norrell.
> 
> I think those are all the actual changes to canon I've made.
> 
> This isn't an au of bookhobbit's the civil institution, but it may have the odd thing in common with that fic because I've read it so many times by now.

“What if I married her?” Childermass asks.

Behind him, he hears Miss Norrell gasp. Her _excuse me_ is lost in Haythornthwaite’s louder, more vicious one. He doesn't look around, keeps his eyes on Haythornthwaite’s face. Not challenging, not meeting his eyes quite. He keeps his expression neutral.

“What did you say, John?” Haythornthwaite’s voice is harder, now, but Childermass plows on. He doesn't let his tone change. He can’t sound either hopeful or begrudging; nothing eager, nothing sour.

“I could marry her.”

The study door slams and Childermass startles; he glances at Jacob, standing just behind Haythornthwaite, and Jacob lifts his eyebrows, tilts his chin. Permission thus granted, Childermass runs after her, out of the study and down the corridor to the library. The door is closed, but he can hear her pacing behind it, so he opens it and slips inside, closing it behind him.

Soft February light glances off the mirror above the fireplace, giving the room a soft, blue cast. She’s standing behind her desk, bracing herself against her chair and wringing her hands. The book that caused the whole trouble sits open on the desk and she looks at it, then reaches out and slams it shut.

“Miss-”

“Don’t,” she bites out through gritted teeth. She sits down and rests her forehead on the palms of her hands.

He stays silent by the door, waiting.

“If you had not insisted in coming with me, then this would have been avoided.”

“You could have been harmed.”

She gives him a baleful look. Her pale eyes are somehow penetrating; so often they seem distant, vague, but here they always have a sharpness.

“If your uncle had found out that you went to York alone, he might have sent you away anyway.”

“I cannot leave,” she says, leafing through the notes on her desk. Childermass risks walking forwards, standing just outside her direct line of sight but close enough that they can have a real conversation, if she obliges.

“I know.”

“I do not want to be married. I have managed quite well so far.”

“You are already twenty-two,” he says, ignoring the look she gives him and looking around with significance at the growing library around them, “With the life you desire, spinsterhood is going to bring you greater scandal than an unwise marriage.”

“I must be respectable, Mr Childermass.”

“That ship’s sailed, miss.”

She looks at him again.

“If you’ll forgive me for saying so.”

She makes a half-buried noise he thinks might be amusement. “You are,” she pauses, glances across her desk in the distant way she does when she’s searching for words, “Convinced that this is the correct course of action?”

“We can put it about that we went to York to be married in secret. There will be gossip, but many a woman has eloped at twenty-two. They’ll find it romantic, once the novelty has worn off.”

Miss Norrell snorts at _romantic_. “I do not wish to be seen as frivolous.”

“Then you should have let me go to York for you.”

She traces over the cover of the book and speaks with a softness that startles him. “I did not know I could have.”

He wants to say something equally gentle, something that hints at the loyalty that has grown in him ever since he had found her doing magic outside on the moor that December, wrapped up in furs and her face flushed with frustration, but they have business to attend to.

“We can have a legal marriage here,” he says, “No need to go to the church and be seen. Just to make it real, in case of challenge. Nothing else need change.”

She sighs, and for a moment he thinks she has another objection, but she nods. He can tell there are things she wants to say, but he can also tell she isn’t going to say them.

He clears his throat. “It will only be on paper,” he says, “To keep people quiet.”

 

\--

 

Childermass leans against the wall of the old Abbey, twisting his empty pipe between his fingers. He’s wearing his best suit and it itches, but Jacob had come to his room above the stables that morning and insisted he change. The vicar and Haythornthwaite are still up at the house, arguing most probably over precedent. He hears footsteps on the grass and looks up; Miss Norrell is walking across the lawn, looking uncomfortable in a dress of brown silk, with a thick cloak over her shoulders. Their eyes catch, but she looks away quickly. Her hair, unpinned, falls across her face, and she pushes it way behind her ear.

“They are not here,” she says.

“They will be soon. They’re only making things sure.”

She catches her lip with her teeth and rubs her cuffs between her fingers, little nervous gestures. She starts as if she’s heard a noise and turns; her hair falls loose again and she makes a sound that on anyone less respectable would have a curse buried in it.

“I cannot do it on my own,” she says to the ground, “But I did not want- I could not bear-”

Childermass, who has seen her flinch from even the most passing touch, hums in acknowledgement. He tucks the pipe in the inside pocket of his coat, and steps toward her. She watches him, wary, and he half smiles.

“I have thought of something,” he says, “If you’ll permit me.”

“It is rather a day for your notions,” she says, but turns her back to him at his gentle urging.

He reaches up to his own queue and undoes the ribbon that holds his hair back. He holds the end of it between his teeth and takes her hair in both hands. She has thin hair, of a dark brown that seems to make her look paler, colder, and touching it he gets the sudden sense that it makes her look more delicate, too. He runs his fingers through it, just so that it hangs neatly in his grasp. He can feel the warmth of her neck against the back of his hand, and swallows. He braids it without lingering, loosely so that the strands do not pull and give her a headach, and ties it with his ribbon.

“There,” he says, and she turns back to him just as the front door closes and Haythornthwaite, Jacob and the vicar walk across the lawn to where they stand in the shadow of the King’s abbey.

Childermass backs off a few paces, tucking his own hair back, and for a moment her gaze follows him.

“This is irregular,” says the vicar, passing between them and entering the abbey, but Childermass had not missed the light of amusement in his eyes, nor the excitement in the way he walks. They follow him inside, and Haythornthwaite and Jacob follow behind them.

The vicar lays the parish register open on a broken stone support, and beckons Childermass and Miss Norrell nearer.

“The King’s laws,” he starts, “Require holy ground-” he gestures to the abbey, “That the participants are of legal age, and that they have permission from any relevant parties who can swear that there is no impediment to marriage. You swear, Mr Haythornthwaite, that your niece is of sound mind, unmarried, and not related to the young gentleman?”

“I swear,” he says, sounding a little less begrudging than he had the night before when he had accepted the proposition.

“And you, Mr Childermass, as you have no relation to speak for you, do swear the same for yourself?”

“I swear,” he says, reaching out to Miss Norrell and resting his fingertips reassuringly on the side of her wrist. She looks at him, and then away.

The vicar scribbles in the records. “I require your names and ages, for the parish records,” he said, a little apologetically, “Miss Norrell?”

She presses, faintly, into Childermass’s touch at her wrist. “Phyllis Catherine Haythornthwaite Norrell,” she says, “I am twenty-three in a week’s time.”

“And you, Mr Childermass?”

“John Childermass,” he says, smiling faintly at his comparative simplicity, “Eighteen as of last November.”

Miss Norrell tugs away from his hand, and he can feel her staring at him.

 The vicar sighs, and Childermass catches him rolling his eyes. “You are cutting it a little fine, Mr Childermass.”

“I’ll vouch for him,” Jacob says, and when Childermass looks at him he winks.

“Your parents have passed, Mr Childermass?” the vicar asks.

“They have, I swear to it.”

“Then I’ll allow it. Miss Norrell, if you would sign?” he hands her his pen and turns the register to face her.

Childermass sees her look at him, and for a second he thinks she’s about to refuse, but she signs her name in her small, cramped writing, and hands him the pen.

He signs, startled to find his hand shaking; he glances at Miss Norrell’s signature and finds it a little trembling at the edges, too.

Childermass hands the pen back to the vicar, who nods at him, who smiles. He takes a deep breath and turns back to face her. He finds, suddenly, that he doesn’t know if there are words, to this kind of marriage. He feels he should say something but then her hand finds his and squeezes and it all flees in the face of what he’s, what they’ve, just done.

She’s looking at him with wide eyes, a little tight anxiety in the set of her mouth. Sunlight hits the wall behind her, shining, and for a second he feels lightheaded; her hand, cold in his, tightens. She presses her lips together, and he watches the cloud of her breath disperse. He opens his mouth to speak, but finds he still has no words; her eyes look through him, and then focus again.

The vicar clears his throat. “You are at this point allowed to kiss your wife, Mr Childermass,” he says, with irony.

He’d forgotten that, he realises. In his head it had all been signing pieces of paper in the parlour; there had been none of this standing in the King’s abbey, none of this wearing of best clothes, none of this standing with her hand in his, half shivering. She’s staring at him, her mouth a little open; she looks a little worried. A strand of her hair has come loose and without thinking he lifts his free hand, tucks it behind her ear. His fingertips trace over her cheek, flushed and warm from the cold air. Her hand shifts in his and for a second he thinks she’s pulling away but she just moves until her fingers are tangled with his. His thumb, without permission, drags over her thin, chapped lower lip. He swallows, shifts forward; he cradles her jaw in his hand and, aware of her watching him with those wide eyes, bends down to kiss her.

Her hand clutches his almost until it hurts. He keeps his touch gentle, as light a kiss as he can manage; she presses back, a little shy. Her mouth is cool, soft despite its dryness, and he finds he was right – she seems less delicate, like this. It feels the same as seeing her in her library, as standing a step behind her in that York bookshop; sharp, angular, rooted. It makes him press closer, tighter; her free hand finds his collar and twists.

He shifts back a hair, intending only to catch his breath, and remembers where they are. He drops his hand from her face and looks away from her, to the ground where the grass is getting his shoes wet. He doesn’t let go of her hand.

 

\--

 

He stands in her doorway, holding a teatray against his hip; Charlotte, with an amused look on her face, had made him up cocoa in a coffee pot and as he holds it, now, he wonders if he might have overstepped. She’s got changed; he can see her chair before the fire from where he stands, and the bottom hem of her chemise drifts against the rug. He knocks against the open door and he hears a book close. Her hand appears; the book is red leather, not quite as old as the ones she usually reads, and the sparing lace of her sleeve is cold against it. She looks around the wing of the chair at him; her hair is still braided back, although by now most of it has fallen. She has that sharp look back in her eyes, and it draws him forward. He closes the door behind him, not quite fully to.

“Charlotte sent me up with cocoa,” he says, and she nods.

It’s the first time he’s been inside her room, and the first time in fact he’s been this far in the house; her room is smaller than he expected, stark and bare. A side table, with only a copper ewer and bowl, a small bed with shutters and hangings, both open. She has only the one chair before the fire, and it looks almost too old to be comfortable; beside the chair is a small table, and at the foot of the bed is a small chest. The rug, in an old English pattern of red and blue, is the only decoration. He had expected lace runners on the furniture, some embroidery samples. But then Miss Norrell seems always to have been single minded.

He puts the tray down on the small table and she watches him silently. She doesn’t seem tense, but not easy, either.

He pours her a cup and then himself; without a chair to sit in, he goes and leans against the wall beside the fireplace, his arm against the mantel.

She folds her legs up on the chair and tucks the dressing gown she’s wearing over the top of her chemise around herself, taking the cup in both hands.

“I had Charlotte put some cream in,” he says.

“Thank you.”

She sips it and leans back, staring into the fire. The light catches against a ring on her finger, and Childermass feels his stomach drop.

“You found a ring,” he says, feeling inane, but she looks at it and then at him with the kind of expression that suggests she didn’t mind.

“My mother’s.”

Childermass rolls his lip between his teeth and distracts himself with a sip of cocoa. It’s richer than any he’s had, sweeter and darker; if this is what money can get him, he thinks, it may not have been such a bad decision. He curses himself for the thought as soon as it shapes itself, but Miss Norrell is looking at him again and so he leaves it.

She says nothing, though, and takes another sip of her cocoa.

He has the feeling that this time the silence is pointed.

“I meant what I said,” he says to his cocoa as he stirs it, “Nothing need change.”

 “I know.”

It’s not that, then. “Is this because of my being eighteen?”

She lowers her cup, resting it on her knee. “I had thought you older.”

Childermass, who has always felt he looked rather younger, finds himself curious. “You did?”

“You have – a bearing. You have more experience of the world.”

“Forgive me, miss, but most people do.”

She closes her eyes and sighs. “I thought you were perhaps older than I, not younger.”

“Five years is not so long. As you say, I have more knowledge of the world.”

She breathes out and returns to her cocoa. “You cannot have presumed you would be married at eighteen to a- to someone of twenty-three.”

“I hadn’t thought of it either way.”

“You had no sweetheart?” she sounds curious, though shy.

He shakes his head. “Never saw fit to bother. I’m not the kind of man people marry,” he says, ironically.

“Nor am I.”

“Well, then.”

He finishes his cocoa and walks back over to put his cup on the tray. Her gaze follows him.

“Miss,” he starts again. He finds he cannot use her name, as much as he may be allowed to. “I came here to say that I was sorry. When I went with you to York I did not imagine this might happen.”

“You were right. If I had gone alone, my uncle would have sent me away. At least this way, I can stay in Yorkshire. I do not like the town.”

“I know.”

“You cannot have offered, just to allow me to stay.”

“Why not?”

She gives him a look. “Men do not pledge marriage on so little. It cannot matter to you whether I stay.”

“Appen it can.”

“People will speculate. They will say – I do not know, that you married me for money or some thing unsavoury.”

“You cannot learn magic in the town.”

For a moment he thinks she will drop her cup, but she places it very carefully on the saucer on her knee. “Am I to credit that you offered to marry me so that I may attempt to learn magic?”

“You can do what you like, but I know very well that you are beyond attempts.”

“Have another cup, Mr Childermass.”

“You can call me John, if you wish,” he says, pouring another cup and walking back to his place at the fireside.

“Appen I don’t,” she says, sounding cross, and he laughs gently.  Still, it seems to have left her thoughtful. “You married me because of magic?”

“We all have causes.”

“And that is all?”

He thinks, suddenly, of kissing her; he thinks of her that night at the Old Starre Inn, a small shape below the covers while he curled himself into his cloak, the fondness he had felt as he listened to her breathing.

“I did not wish to be the cause of your pain.”

“Oh.”

They finish their cocoa in silence, the fire crackling. He is just about to take his leave and go back to his frozen room above the stables when she speaks.

“Will it be noted,” she says, “If you do not stay?”

“Probably.” He puts his cup down again on the tray, stacks it with hers.

“They would use it as a chance to,” she pauses, “Cast doubt?”

“Miss Norrell,” he says, “You can ask, if you want me to stay.”

It is the wrong thing to say. She looks straight into the fire and does not answer him.

He goes to the door, pushes it shut and bolts it.

“I merely wished to know. If you find me distasteful-”

“I do not find you distasteful,” he says, staying with his back pressed against the door, “But I will leave, if you desire. Or stay, in any capacity.” It is, perhaps, a bold promise. His skin prickles, as if to remind him he may not be able to keep it.

“You may do as you like.” Her voice is stiffer than it was, almost officious.

For a moment he considers leaving. She would not stop him, nor come after him; she is too rooted here. It would not pass unnoticed that he had left, and so they would have to repeat this over again tomorrow night. The chances of coming to another answer then are slim, and it seems farcical to do the same night after night. That, he thinks, would feel like a wearing-down.

He comes away from the door, back towards the fire. He sits down on the rug, holds his hands out to the fire. His skin prickles, not all of it with cold. He looks up at her, still staring into the fire, and realises with a low, fine shiver, what he must do.

“Miss Norrell,” he says, unwilling to let them stagnate any longer, “Please do not mistake me. I will stay, though only as I did in York, but there is something that I feel you should see, before we go on. If in consequence you wish me to leave, I shall.”

She meets his eyes and nods.

Without getting up, he sheds his coat and begins on his waistcoat buttons. He feels as if he must look lecherous; as if he had meant more than he said, as if he were counting on her naivety.

“Mr Childermass?”

He stops. That’s the tone he had been hoping she would not use; half doubtful, half fearful. Staring at the rug, he says: “I swear, my intentions will become clear, but they are not – I would not trick you.”

She breathes in, and he hears her shift in the chair. “Carry on, then.”

He finishes unbuttoning his waistcoat, pushes it off his shoulders and folds it atop his coat. After that comes his neckcloth, which is a fight; he had never had to wear one before coming to Hurtfew, and even after some six months found himself frequently in a tangle.

He pauses once he gets the neckcloth undone; for a moment he wonders if his shape is severe enough, without the layers at his neck, for her to understand him. He looks at her and finds her watching, still confused.

He unties the neck of his shirt and pulls it off over his head without ceremony. Reaching behind himself he starts to pull at his laces, but her hand on his shoulder, turning him toward her, stops him.

He closes his eyes so that he can avoid her expression and turns to face her. Her fingertip trails down the edge of the strap, and he can feel her nail through the old linen of the shirt he wears beneath. From there across the neckline, delicate over his chest; down the side to where the tabs that frame his hips disappear into his breeches.

“I have never known a man wear stays,” she says, and he opens his eyes. Their faces are almost level, and he sees no disgust there. Only a kind of slow, tense curiosity.

“Few do.”

She opens her mouth to speak, closes it, swallows. “But some do?”

“Aye.”

“I have-” she starts, and stops, “I have been told tales of women who – disguised themselves.”

“I’m no Rosalind,” he says, very softly, “Much as I may look like it. I am a man, though perhaps an unusual one.”

She trails her fingers back up, lets go when he shivers. “I did not know that was possible.”

There is something heavy in her voice, and when he looks at her he finds her eyes wet.

“Miss-” he starts, and she jerks. Her face goes very pale, and she pulls herself away from him.

“I,” she says, “I-” She thuds against the back of her chair and reaches out to the pot of chocolate; when she finds it empty, her hand spasms and falls back to her lap.

_Oh_ , Childermass thinks. “I have known several men like me,” he says, with false casualness, “In certain circles they are common.”

“Certain circles?”

An answer will push them off topic, so he ignores it. “We gravitate toward one another, it seems.”

“Oh.”

They sit in silence, for a moment.

“I can leave, if you desire.”

“No.”

With that final, fleeting unequivocality, Childermass stands up and unties his stays. He drops them on top of his pile of clothes and stretches; his shoulders ache from being held back and he rolls them, letting slip a faint sound.

“I can sleep on the floor,” he offers as he steps out of his shoes and breeches, remembering York.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It does not become you.”

That, too, has York in it; although then it was in answer to him going and sleeping in the stables. He glances back toward the chair by the fire, where Norrell sits unmoving, and sits down on the bed.

“Are you sure-”

“I do not see how I can be clearer, Mr Childermass.”

Childermass stands back up and folds back the sheets. Without speaking again he settles himself under them and pulls the sheets up; he reaches out and pulls the hanging half across. It’s not so soft a bed as he had expected; the sheets are finer and softer than he’s known but not uncomfortably so, and he feels half-asleep already, floating, as he nuzzles into the pillow. Norrell doesn’t follow him, and he falls asleep like that, on the very edge of the bed, alone.

 

\--

 

He wakes up in the middle of the night to a dark room, the fire all but out; he can feel from a shift in the mattress that he is no longer alone. Norrell’s breathing is too fast to be asleep; when Childermass turns over, he finds them face to face.

“Sir?” asks Childermass, reaching out.

Norrell takes his hand in both of his and presses it to his jaw so that he can feel him nod. Childermass stretches his fingers out, draws them along Norrell’s chin.

“Well,” he whispers, his voice slow with sleep, “This has been rather a day.”

Norrell laughs, twines his fingers with Childermass’s. His ring presses cool against Childermass’s fingers, and Childermass bends so that he can twist it a little.

He closes his eyes, and heavier now their hands slip apart.

“I have an ally, now,” Norrell says, in the kind of voice that suggests tiredness has made him bold.

Childermass hums in agreement and finds Norrell’s hand again on the mattress.


End file.
